“Alright, boys, make sure you take everything with you! I don’t want to hear any complaints on Monday that somebody lost their damn iPod, we clear?” Coach bellows at us. As a general rule, most of us on the team assume that the constant bellowing is a result of way too many steroids in his college years.

“Clear!” we all echo. Corey turns to me and nudges my arm.

“You wanna come over tomorrow? Miles and I were gonna watch a shitload of movies and eat our weight in nachos,” he says. I grin, but shake my head.

“Can’t. You know I’ve gotta work my ass off now, since I’ve been dicking around in school lately. If I don’t get Caldeway’s project done by Sunday night, there’s no way I’ll be able to finish all my other assignments due next week,” I say. Corey rolls his eyes.

“I thought we were done with losing you to schoolwork,” he says. I shrug.

“Guess not,” I say. As the bus turns into the school parking lot, we all lazily collect our belongings and start to filter down the aisle. I have to grip the overhead bin as the bus lurches to a stop in front of the main entrance, then sling my duffel over my shoulder as I file out past the rest of the team.

“Nice time tonight, McCall,” Logan, the Varsity team captain, says, clapping me on the shoulder. I flash him a brief smile.

“Thanks, Lo,” I say. “I’ll see you at practice Monday.”

“Damn. I was hoping you’d hang out with me on Monday instead.”

I turn very slowly, not daring to believe that that voice could be real. Never in my wildest fantasies could I have hoped for this. But it’s real; Garen is leaning against the building, fifteen feet away. His backpack and guitar case are on the ground near him, and his eyes are on me.

“Of course not. I never could. Not even if you wanted me to,” I say. The smile disappears as he begins to walk towards me.

“I couldn’t forget you either. I tried. Believe me, I tried. I thought it was for the best, but the second I was away from you, I realized that the best place for me is with you. That’s the only place for me,” he says.

“Don’t say that unless you mean it,” I force out. He shakes his head and touches my cheek.

“I’ve never meant anything more,” he whispers, and he presses his lips to mine.

“Travis? Travis, wake the fuck up! God, I’ve been saying your name for almost five minutes!”

My eyes snap open, then blink repeatedly to adjust to the darkness. “Huh?”

“I said, I’ve been trying to wake you up for five minutes. We’re at the school,” Corey says. I rub the sleep from my eyes and stretch as much as the cramped seat allows.

“Right. Thanks. Sorry,” I mutter. The disappointment is already starting to make my heart sink, but I clear my throat and turn to face Miles in the seat behind me. If I really work at it, I can fight this off.

“Do you know if Faye is still planning to come over my house on Sunday to work on our project?” I ask. He shrugs and stands up.

“Not too sure. She didn’t mention it, but she’s coming over tomorrow. I can ask her to call you when she gets home,” he says. I nod.

“Thanks, man,” I say. I stand up as well and grab my duffel from the overhead bin. Waking up from a dream about getting off the bus makes actually getting off the bus seem surreal in itself. I should be used to this shit by now, though. I’ve been having them for almost three weeks now, almost every night since Garen left. Not usually in regards to track practice, but in regards to almost everything else. I come home from school, and he’s playing guitar in his bedroom again. I turn to the next customer at the Grind, and it’s him. He comes into my Pre-Calculus class, my Brit Lit class, my Spanish class. The fantasy itself doesn’t matter, because every time I wake up, the reality is the same. Garen is gone. He has been for almost a month. And he will be forever.

“Nice time tonight, faggot,” Logan, the Varsity team captain, says, clapping me on the shoulder so hard my knees almost buckle.

“It’s been like that for a while now. I guess Nicole figured if I was open with her about… you know… then she could be open with pretty much everyone else in the school. Logan’s reaction was actually one of the more favorable ones,” I say.

“Really?” Ben says. I nod.

“He threw me into a row of lockers two weeks ago. And Will Bernard tries to trip me every day in the cafeteria. Jack Thorne did this,” I say, holding my bag up so he can see the word “cocksucker” scribbled across the side of it in permanent marker.

“Shit. Well, believe it or not… it gets better,” he says. “I speak from experience. I came out freshman year, and at first, it was so shitty I wished I’d just stayed a closet-case until college. My real friends were cool with it, and I guess my parents took it okay. The rest of the school, though… that was the real problem. Everybody started giving me so much shit. None of it even started to calm down until I was a sophomore, and even now, it’s still fucked up sometimes.”

“You’re not making me feel any better,” I say.

“I wasn’t really trying to,” Ben says, shrugging. I sigh and sit down on the sidewalk, slumping back against the side of the school. After a minute, Ben sits down next to me.

“You wanna talk?” he asks. I shrug half-heartedly, but he doesn’t seem too eager to leave me alone, so finally, I look at him.

“I hate this,” I whisper. “I don’t even get it. How is it possible that just a few months ago, things were so easy? It should’ve been more complicated back when I was in the closet and had a boyfriend, but now I’m out, and I’m single, and it should be okay, but it isn’t. I wasn’t prepared for any of this.”

“That’s because it’s a lot easier not to give a shit what people think when you’ve got somebody going through it with you. Being gay with a boyfriend and being gay when you’re alone are completely different things. If you’d come out back when Garen was still around, do you honestly think people would’ve started shit with you? The guy was over six-feet tall, completely jacked, and had military training. Nobody was going to pick a fight with him. But now, you’re just you,” he says.

“I hate being just me,” I sigh, letting my eyes drift shut.

“Like I said, it gets better eventually. It’s probably never gonna be a walk in the park, as long as you’re in Lakewood, but it’ll get easier,” he says. We sit in silence for several minutes before a sudden thought occurs to me.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” I ask, opening my eyes again. “It’s like, ten o’clock. Normally nobody’s around when we get back from our away meets.”

“They leave the school open late when sports teams have away meets, and I told you a few weeks ago that Jeff gives us all extra music room keys. I’m actually here working with Alex, Jeremy, and Mason. They’re all still putting their stuff away. I came out when I saw the bus pull in. I wanted to check up on you,” he says. I can’t help but smile a little at that.

“Thanks, Doc, but I already have one shrink,” I say. Ben nudges my arm with his.

“Then you should think about getting your money back, ‘cause obviously it’s not working,” he says, and I push him lightly. The front doors to the building open a few feet away from us, and his friends from Musical Theory come out. He stands up quickly, brushing off his jeans, and takes one step towards them before he pauses and turns back to face me.

“Do you have any plans for the rest of the night?” he asks. I shrug.

“Not really. Mom never knows what time my meets are gonna run until, so she just leaves the porch light on and tells me to make sure I lock up again whenever I come home,” I say. Ben shoves his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and jerks his head towards his friends.

“Wanna come out with us? We’re only headed to Taco Bell, no place interesting, but…” He hesitates. “I don’t know. It probably beats going home, for you.”

It only takes me a few seconds to decide, even though those seconds are tainted with a little bit of apprehension. How do I expect hanging out with Garen’s old friends to make it any easier to get over him? But regardless, I stand up and shoulder my duffel again.

“Yeah, sounds cool. Thanks,” I say. The next thing I know, I’m sitting next to Ben in a Taco Bell booth, with Alex, Jeremy, and Mason wedged into the other side.

“You ever wonder what’s actually in this stuff?” Jeremy, a scrawny blonde with a five o’clock shadow, says, waving his quesadilla. A chunk of what might be chicken drops onto the wrapper.

“Fried rat’s ass,” Alex says.

“Baby livers,” Mason, a guy in a hat who smells faintly of weed, adds.

“Wildebeest,” Ben says. I push the final few bites of my soft taco away.

“Okay, I think I’m done,” I say. Ben laughs. Almost as if they choreographed the movement, Alex, Mason, and Jeremy all lean forward slightly.

“So, Travis, what are your intentions with young Benjamin?” Mason asks. Ben aims a blind kick under the table at him, possibly getting Jeremy as well. I tense slightly. Is this whole thing a set-up?

“W-What?” I stammer.

“You guys are assholes,” Ben says. “I didn’t ask him to come with us as my date. This is Travis McCall. As in Ev McCall’s son? As in Garen’s Travis?”

Garen’s Travis. Yeah, right.

“No shit, man,” Mason says, looks surprised. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I mutter.

“So, how is he anyway? We haven’t heard from him since he left for wherever.” Jeremy adopts a grating New York accent at least one octave above his own voice. “What’s this? He doesn’t call, he doesn’t write. Weeks, we wait, and nothing!”

“I uh… I actually haven’t heard from him either. Not since the night he got kicked out and broke up with me,” I say. I reach down to twist my ring around my finger, almost out of habit. There’s a brief pause.

“Wow, Ben, you sure know how to lead a conversation into a misinformed and awkward silence,” Alex finally says.

“Yeah, because it’s definitely my fault,” Ben says, rolling his eyes.

“So, not that we don’t love your company, Travis, but if you’re not here because you wanna get in good with Ben’s friends, and subsequently get in his pants, then why are you coming out with us tonight?” Mason asks. I glance around at them all, then focus on the tabletop. I have no idea what to say. Probably because I don’t know why I’m here. Ben reaches under the table and taps the back of my hand, as though absorbing the tension from my body through the single point where his skin touches mine. For a second, I’m comforted.

“I asked him to come out with us because he’s been going through some shit lately. You guys remember what people were like with me when the rumors first started going around,” he says. The others murmur in understanding. I clear my throat.

“If you guys don’t mind me asking… are any of you, um…” They seem to understand without me having to finish my awkwardly phrased question.

“Mason and I are both straight,” Jeremy says. “And well… Alex is straight too, I guess?” Alex nods in confirmation.

“Except when he’s drunk and ends up making out with Ben. Which actually happens pretty frequently,” Mason says.

“Is it my fault if he’s a good kisser?” Alex asks. “Strictly above-the-waist kind of bisexual, though. I have no interest in touching any dick that isn’t my own.”

“Your journey to the land of too much information can stop immediately,” Ben says.

“What about your friends?” Mason asks, nodding to me.

“What about them?” I ask. He raises his eyebrows at me, but I still can’t understand where he’s going with this. Ben leans back in his seat and stretches his arms out over the back of the booth.

“Um…” I say. “They’re all straight, yeah. Faye and Miles have been together for like a year and a half or something, and Corey’s really into girls but doesn’t date seriously too much. No, it’s uh… it’s only me.”

Ben shifts his arm from the back of the booth onto my shoulders and gives them a slight squeeze. “Of course. Ten percent, my ass. Looks like it’s just the two of us in this pathetic waste of a town. Well, us, and Alex when he’s wasted.”

“I have to admire your tact, Ben. Talking about Frenching the dude across from you when you’ve got your arm around the dude next to you,” he says.

“Come on, it’s not like I’m hitting on him,” Ben says, glancing at me. His arm suddenly feels heavy on my shoulders. This is not Garen’s arm part of my brain seems to be screaming at me. Garen’s arm is longer, and has more muscles, and isn’t swathed in soft black fabric, and is connected to Garen’s body, which is definitely not next to me right now. Which will definitely never be next to me again. Ben must feel me tense up under his arm, because he suddenly withdraws it and almost shrinks in on himself, drawing his legs up from under the table and hugging them to his chest.

“What time is it?” Mason asks. I push my sleeve up to check my watch.

“A little after eleven,” I say.

“We should probably head out,” he replies.

“Yeah, you and your fucking curfew,” Jeremy snorts as we shovel our empty wrappers and soda cups into the trash and head out to the parking lot.

“I told you, it’s only for another week. And it’s your fault anyway, you’re the one who convinced me to stay out until three last week. You know what my mom’s like,” Mason says. Ben snorts.

“Yeah, a fuckin’ Nazi is what she’s like,” he says. “Where’d you park?”

“Over by the dumpster, ‘cause I’m classy like that. Jer, you want me to drive you? I’m gonna pass by your house on the way to Alex’s anyway,” Mason offers. Jeremy nods.

“Yeah, thanks. Travis, are you gonna ride with Ben or us?” he asks. Ben shakes his head.

“I live like, ten minutes away from their house. I can take him.” I wonder if he notices that he automatically referenced the boy who is not here.

“Alright, that’s cool. See you Monday, then,” Mason says, ducking into the driver’s seat of his sedan.

“It was cool hanging out with you, Travis. I’ll see you both in school,” Alex says. He claps me on the shoulder, punches Ben on the arm, and follows Jeremy to Mason’s car.

“Wish you hadn’t come out with us?” Ben asks with the smallest hint of a smile as we both get into his SUV.

“No, no,” I say quickly. “The guys are great. I actually… had a much better time than I’d anticipated. It helped keep my mind off of… him. And stuff. So uh, yeah, thank you.”

“Any time,” he replies, but he doesn’t look at me again before pulling out of the parking lot. I reach out and run my hand across the dashboard.

“No offense, but uh… you’re kind of a small guy. Do you really need a car this big?” I ask. He laughs.

“I’ve five six. And it’s a family car. We’ve got this, my dad’s Saturn that he uses to drive to work, and my mom’s minivan. We need a lot of space. I’ve got four sisters and one brother.”

“Shit. Really? Are they all younger?” I ask. He nods.

“Yep. Rosie is ten, Jane is eight, Izzy is five, and Madison is three. And my brother Asher is four months,” he says. I twist as sideways as I can in my seat and let the side of my face fall against the headrest.

“So do you do a lot of babysitting, then? Herding all the little ones around like some kind of midget rodeo?” I ask.

“That is probably the weirdest description of my family that I’ve ever heard. But it’s not entirely inaccurate,” he says. He falls silent after that. The next song that comes up on whatever mix he’s playing in the stereo is loud, and sounds somewhat painful, but somehow, I drift off anyway. When I actually come to, the car is pulling into my driveway. I blink a few times.

“Shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t worry about it. You looked like you needed it anyway,” Ben says, shrugging off my apologies.

“Thanks again… for inviting me out tonight. It was fun,” I say. He nods.

“We should uh, do it again sometime,” he says. Something from his tone of voice gives me the impression that despite his words, he’d rather not. In a way, I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t want to be around me too much right now either.

“Thanks for driving me home. I’ll see you Monday,” I mutter, seizing my duffel and hopping out of the car. He doesn’t pull away until I’m done unlocking the door. Once I’m inside the house again and the sound of his tires on the pavement has faded, everything is all too silent again.